Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Long before I was selected to represent the people of Solomon, I was lobbying for a new hospital in Palmerston. I attended the first ever community meeting on this topic, which was held at the CMAX cinema in Palmerston. Throughout the 2013 election campaign and my first term in office I fought hard for the people of Palmerston to get a hospital. I was involved at the beginning, not because there was any political gain in it but because Palmerston is my community. Palmerston is where I raised my family and where my granddaughter is going to grow up.

So I rise today to update the House on the progress towards the Palmerston Regional Hospital. But before I get down to brass tacks, I would like to fill in honourable members on some context. The Country Liberals raised the idea of the Palmerston hospital in 1999 and the very next year delivered a 24-hour clinic. But guess what? Labor closed that clinic. The Northern Territory Labor Party had 11 years in office which ended, fortunately, in August 2012. Federally, the Labor Party held office, as we know, for six years to September 2013. During this time, progress towards the Palmerston hospital saw the assembly of a temporary fence on a three-hectare piece of land where they claimed they were building this hospital. Even the Palmerston mayor said that the site was unsuitable. You see, Labor never really meant to build a proper hospital in Palmerston, which is my home town, as I said. It is the fastest growing city in Australia, yet Labor selected a site with no room for growth or expansion. It was just three hectares. That is typical, isn't it?

The Labor health facility was essentially to be a box-ticking exercise. It was as little as they could get away with. This says a lot about Labor. But even after setting the bar so low they still botched it. Not a sod had been turned when governments changed at both the state and federal level and plans began again for a proper regional hospital, a facility which will serve Palmerston, the rural area and Darwin.

The federal Labor government initially offered to contribute $70 million if the Northern Territory government contributed $40 million. As Leader of the Opposition now Prime Minister Abbott and I are committed to raise the federal contribution to the $110 million. So there is a $150 million investment between the federal and Northern Territory government which will now deliver a 24-hour emergency department, a specialist ambulatory care unit, cardiology, renal medicine, cancer services, paediatric services and natal and postnatal obstetrics, with scope to include birthing in stage 2.

Under this coalition government, this hospital has progressed from temporary fencing which Labor erected on a three-hectare piece of scrub to a 45-hectare site with headworks and design well underway. Residents of Palmerston are already seeing work underway around the intersection of Temple Terrace and the Stuart Highway. The roads, intersections, traffic signals and parks in the area are already in the process of being upgraded to accommodate this brand-new health facility.

The coalition government are taking this very seriously. We are giving it the attention it deserves. This is a government of infrastructure, and there is no infrastructure more important than hospitals. The previous Labor government spent more time building detention beds than it ever did building hospital beds. But we are about building hospital beds. The coalition are building a hospital to provide a high level of care to the people of Darwin, Palmerston and the surrounding areas for not just now but well into the future. We are going to build a hospital that is state-of-the-art and is going to deliver services for the next 50 years. I look forward to working with the new NT health minister, Minister Elferink. And I look forward to working with my Palmerston based Territory colleagues—Lia Finocchiaro, the member for Drysdale, Nathan Barrett, the member for Blain, and the education minister Peter Chandler—because the four of us are the Palmerston team and we are going to do deliver a hospital for Palmerston for now and in the future. The people of Palmerston can count on us to deliver and to do what we say we are going to do, and that is to build a hospital that is going to service the community for the next 50 years.

Question agreed to.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 12:49